New Research at Yellowstone Reveals the Unbelievable Loss of Revenue With Every Grizzly Bear Death
On October 22, 2024, Yellowstone’s celebrity grizzly bear Grizzly 399 slammed into a speeding car and died on the spot. Nicknamed “Taylor Swift of Grizzlies” and “Queen of the Teton, Grizzly 399 was a 29-year-old matriarch who raised 18 healthy cubs all by herself, per PBS. Soon after her death, one of her cubs, named “Spirit,” fled away from the park and was never seen again. It is very unlikely that Spirit survived the harsh winter season. On Reddit, the park’s visitors flooded the comments section, lamenting the sad demise of the grizzlies. This is just one case. The Denver Post reports that nearly 77 bears died in Yellowstone last year. Apart from being grief-striking, the deaths of these bears have greatly impacted the money-books of Yellowstone, as the officials of the US Geological Society documented in a recent report.
In Yellowstone, the period from summertime through autumn is a roll call for bears to stock up their bodies with calorie-rich foods and fatten up for the winter. At this point, visitors notice bears lumbering across low-elevation areas and south-facing slopes, where they comb the meadows for carcasses of dead animals. Adult grizzly moms feed milk and fresh grass to their babies, as shown in a Nat Geo Animals documentary. This puts bears in a precarious position, as humans seeking Instagram-worthy selfies are usually scrambling along these meadows and roadways. For the park, this illuminates a brilliant opportunity to assess where the bulk of their revenue is coming from, especially in scenes of “bear jams.”
Where bears go, there visitors go, and where visitors go, there money follows. In this report, scientists Leslie Richardson and Aaron Enriquez narrowed down their investigation to just one species of bear, to assess if they could put a price tag on Yellowstone’s bears and how much profit they actually bring to the park. And as it turned out, bears are the golden goose. Officials found that a grizzly bear sighting is worth a staggering $46,000 eaach and black bears bring in a handsome $15,000. Overall, the bear sightings bring an estimated $17 million to Yellowstone. So when they die, the park’s economy suffers.
Bear deaths observed in the park were found to be happening due to numerous reasons, including different wildlife management actions, human-caused activities, such as poaching, self-defense kills, and motor vehicle collisions, among others. Differences in bear biology also play a role. For this study, scientists studied the numbers of grizzly bears and black bears to assess how these charismatic wildlife species contribute to the profitability of the park.
"Just as a wolf is the voice of the wild, the grizzly is the soul of the American wildland," retired wildlife expert Chuck Neal shared with Cowboy State Daily. "You cannot put a price on a grizzly head. The grizzly is priceless." In conversation with The National Parks Experience, Enriquez revealed that the objective of the study was to quantify just one small piece of the total economic value of bears by estimating a “use” value from bear sightings. The entire total value, Enriquez said, would be higher, especially I one accounted for “non-use” values.
In the study, scientists sought to answer three factors relating to the integration of the human dimensions of wildlife, the quality of the visitor experience, and the value of passive wildlife observation. The first question they asked was the monetary value of a visitor’s experience spent viewing a specific wildlife species. Second, they reflected upon the changes in a bear’s population size. The third factor they determined was seasonality and proximity to visitor use locations.
To begin with, the team employed the “travel cost method” to obtain the value of a wildlife viewing trip, its estimated value per animal sighting. The final step involved estimating the probability of viewing an animal to determine an individual animal’s contribution to sighting value, which varies by species type, visibility, and seasonality.
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